A Moment On Bedrock

They tell you, “Leap and the net will appear.”

What if it doesn’t?

What if you leap anyway — trembling, exhausted, terrified — and there is no net? What if you recover from alcoholism, self-harm, anorexia, rape, and assault — think you’ve finally reached stable ground — only to be swept into another nightmare?

What if you leave the abusive marriage, call 911, file the paperwork, tell the truth, survive the humiliation, survive the courtrooms, survive the therapy, survive the sleepless nights, survive the flashbacks, survive the financial collapse… and your life still falls apart while the abuser walks away untouched?

What if faith doesn’t save you?

People love stories about redemption because redemption makes suffering easier to witness. They want the survivor glowing in soft lighting, writing inspirational captions about healing and resilience. They want the “after” photo. They want the TED Talk. They want the triumphant comeback arc. They want forgiveness and silence and the good little girl.

But some of us are still sitting in the wreckage.

Some of us escaped and lost everything.

I left abuse expecting freedom. I thought truth mattered. I thought courage mattered. I thought if I finally chose myself, some invisible force would meet me halfway.

Instead, I found paperwork. Bills. Isolation. Lawyers who shrug. Officers who smirk. Systems that stall. Protection orders that expire. Police reports swallowed by silence. A culture that asks survivors to perform perfection while predators continue their lives.

I spent sixteen months — on top of nineteen years of recovery work — trying to become the ‘good survivor’.

I wrote over a hundred articles about abuse, recovery, trauma, spirituality, sobriety, truth, and healing. I made PDFs. More paintings. Sculptures. Films. Essays. Journal entries. Rituals. I poured years of therapy and grief into work meant to help other people survive what I survived.

Almost nobody cares.

Not because the work isn’t real. Not because the pain isn’t real. But because the world rewards visibility more than truth. Algorithms reward performance more than sincerity. Predators often move through life with more confidence than wounded people because they never stop to question whether they deserve space. Wounded people are trained to question their right to exist.

Traumatized people question themselves constantly.

That’s the difference.

I kept hearing that sobriety would save my life. That faith would transform me. That if I prayed hard enough, healed hard enough, forgave hard enough, worked hard enough, eventually something beautiful would happen.

Nineteen years sober and I’m still fighting to survive.

There’s no applause for surviving abuse quietly. There’s no medal for rebuilding your nervous system while working jobs you hate just to pay rent. There’s no reclaiming a life savings that was stolen. There’s no divine audience handing out rewards because you chose integrity instead of cruelty.

Sometimes it feels like the people who win are simply the people willing to lie harder.

The people willing to dominate harder.

The people willing to take. To rob. To betray.

And that realization can rot your faith from the inside out.

I prayed anyway.

I prayed in bed. In storms. By the ocean. By fires. On hillsides with ravens overhead. I prayed to God, to Jesus, to Magdalene, to every symbol of love and protection I could reach for. I wrote letters. Burned them. Buried them. Folded them under pillows like a child trying to bargain with the universe.

Nothing answered.

Or at least, nothing answered in the miraculous way people promise.

No rescue arrived.

No sudden glow-up.

No wealthy benefactor.

No great cosmic correction.

Just another rent payment. Another panic attack. Another morning forcing myself out of bed while carrying memories that never leave the body.

That’s the part people don’t understand about abuse and childhood trauma. It lives in your nervous system. It shapes your reflexes, your relationships, your exhaustion, your fear, your sense of worth. You don’t simply “manifest” your way out of decades of conditioning and violence.

People say, “Just love yourself.”

As if self-love erases terror.

As if affirmations erase body memories.

As if a woman can meditate her way out of systemic indifference.

I look back at my life sometimes and wonder who I might have become if I had been protected instead of used. If I had been encouraged instead of shamed. If I’d been respected and guided instead of gaslit, groomed and manipulated. If the adults around me had taught me boundaries instead of obedience. If I’d been connected to my indigenous culture instead of raised without roots.

If love had felt safe instead of dangerous.

How different would my choices have been?

How different would I be?

People see survivors after the damage and ask why we struggle. They rarely ask what shaped the struggle in the first place.

I am tired of pretending suffering automatically creates wisdom, beauty, or purpose.

Sometimes suffering just hurts.

Sometimes survival is ugly.

Sometimes people do everything “right” and still end up alone, exhausted, financially drowning, and spiritually shattered.

And yet.

Even in all this rage, there is still a part of me writing.

A part still documenting.

A part still refusing to disappear completely.

Maybe that part is not faith in God.

Maybe it is simply refusal.

Refusal to let the truth die.

Refusal to let what happened be rewritten.

Refusal to become silent just because silence would make other people more comfortable.

I don’t have a neat ending for this.

No inspirational turnaround.

No clean redemption arc.

Only this:

Some survivors are not glowing. Some are barely surviving. Some are angry. Some are disillusioned. Some are grieving the lives they never got to have.

And they still deserve to exist.